Snowstorms bring major dangers, expenditures and inconveniences. From drivers and home owners to large-scale municipal services, all experience the burdens associated with ice and snow accumulation. From hardships of shoveling snow and increased accident rates, to shutdowns of entire cities, winter precipitation exacts a heavy toll on society. Yet, current methods of dealing with this major menace remain mostly primitive and leave much room for improvement.
When temperature is close to melting point and accumulations of snow are insignificant, salt is often used to melt the snow. Salted snow melts into a salty solution on roads and sidewalks. The solution is usually not gathered up after the treatment. Instead, it stays on the road surface or absorbs into the nearby soils, causing a number of adverse environmental effects, including the change in soil pH and contamination of ground waters. Salt on the road accelerates rust and causes other damage to vehicles. Upon drying, salty solution turns into a fine dust, causing allergies and other health-related issues in nearby communities.
The extent of environmental effect of highway salting can not be underestimated. Quantities of salt poured out across the nation are staggering. Some 10 million tons of salt per year are dumped onto the highways. Some states, such as Massachusetts annually use up to 19.4 tons of salt per lane on each mile of its state highways. All of this salt is left to interact with the environment.
If the temperature is low or precipitation is heavy, the use of salt may not even be sufficient to melt the accumulations of snow. In such situations, the use of salt is a waste of resources and contamination of the environment without a tangible positive effect. Furthermore, treatment of snow with salt at lower temperatures actually worsens snow's characteristics, creating an unpassable mushy mass, instead of a dense level surface.
Moreover, treatment of road surfaces with salt and/or sand can only be executed on short stretches of the roadway. Each truck, loaded with salt and/or sand can cover a limited distance of the roadway before it must return to the salt/sand storage depot for reloading. The return trips and reloading greatly reduce the time that this special equipment is actually used to treat the roads.
It is also worth noting that salting and sanding of the road surfaces introduces physical particles, capable of causing physical damage to vehicles and bystanders. Sand often contains larger particles and rocky bits. Similarly, salt is often clumped into rocks. These hard particles can be turned into dangerous missiles by spreading equipment and passing cars. Each winter, numerous instances of windshield damage and injury are reported due to the substances deposited onto the highways.
Physical removal of snow commonly involves various types of plows and screw conveyor systems. These machines often cause mechanical scraping of the road surface, leading to damage and necessity of expensive repairs. Furthermore, these devices are limited in efficiency by the height of snow accumulation. The height (and/or width) of the plow or the mouth of the screw conveyor is set and can not be fully adjusted to address the varying height of the snow accumulation. For example, if the accumulations of snow are much greater than the height of the collection device (such as a plow), then the collection device must be raised in order to interact with the upper layer of the accumulation. If it is raised, then the efficiency of cleaning drops, as the lower layer of accumulation does not get gathered/moved at the same time. Instead, this layer gets compacted by the vehicle passing behind the plow/conveyor, making the snow harder to remove and slower to melt. If the plow is lowered, so that the snow overflows the top edge, then the top layer does not get moved. Not only does this top layer of snow stay on the road, but it gets in front of the collecting vehicle, lowering its efficiency and/or preventing movement.
Collection of the snow, using a traditional plow or screw conveyor also frequently leaves behind a layer of ice, bonded to the road cover. Thus, often the removal of top layers of snow leads to exposure of the underlying black ice. This results in increased incidence or car accidents and pedestrian slips and falls.
Furthermore, snow, removed in the traditional mechanical way, is often not disposed of. Rather, it is commonly simply shifted to the sides of the street, reducing the width of lanes, and blocking parked vehicles, sidewalks and pedestrian crossings. Car owners are often forced to throw snow back onto the road in an effort to free their cars, often reversing the cleaning efforts.
Rarely, the snow is gathered and loaded onto the trucks for remote disposal or melting. Gathering and transporting the snow, even from a limited area, requires tremendous transportation capabilities and costs. Once the snow is transported to the final destination, it's utilization poses additional issues. Keeping up with melting of great quantities of transported compacted snow, as truckloads arrive, is often unfeasible. When snow is dumped into giant piles, such piles take many months to fully melt, taking up valuable space and causing build-ups of melted water. When it is dumped into natural bodies of water, together with salt and road waste, environmental damage occurs.
Some prior art devices attempt to melt the gathered ice and snow within the device. However, melting of the snow is commonly done after it is mechanically collected and loaded into the device. This method does not avoid the inefficiencies of mechanical collection and scraping/damage to the road cover, as described above. Furthermore, collected snow usually includes the dirt and debris from the lower layers of snow, closest to the road surface. The melt, resulting from such a collection, is a dirty slush that can not be efficiently reused and must be dumped, resulting in inefficiency energy use and pollution.
In light of the problems associated with traditional methods of snow and ice removal, there is a long-standing and unsatisfied need in the art for a device and method that would address these shortcomings. The new device and method must be capable of not just shifting the accumulations, but of actually melting and removing ice and snow from surfaces. It must do so evenly, quickly and efficiently, with minimal energy expenditures. Where possible, the device must recycle the resources and conserve heat. It must be capable of leaving surfaces free of ice and snow without leaving behind any potentially-dangerous rocky bits, salt or chemical residue. The new device should be capable of removing not only the upper layers of snowy accumulations, but also the underlying layer of ice, frozen to the surface. Such device and method must also avoid scratching, chipping and otherwise damaging the road surface, as present methods do. Furthermore, the height/width of the snow-melting section of the new device must be adjustable in order to efficiently accommodate various levels of ice/snow accumulations. The device must also be capable of operating continuously for extended periods of time without the need to reload/resupply its chambers. The present invention achieves all of these objectives and provides numerous additional benefits.